


Autonomy

by zephyras13



Series: Exiles [19]
Category: Bleach
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Angst, Choices, Drabble Collection, F/M, Metaphors, Present Tense, Requited Love, Romantic Friendship, Secrets, Self-Esteem, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-15
Updated: 2012-06-15
Packaged: 2017-11-07 19:40:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/434649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zephyras13/pseuds/zephyras13
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dealing with the aftermath is never easy, but at this point Rukia is more than used to making the hard choices.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Autonomy

Ichigo is practically _vibrating_ with excitement. Rukia watches him out of the corner of her eye as he fidgets in his seat, obviously resisting pacing a hole in Urahara's tatami mats. In any other circumstance it would be amusing, but Rukia is more than a bit preoccupied with the reason Ichigo isn't out testing his newly-returned powers, mainly the girl lying in the futon adjacent to him.

Rukia does not want the girl there. She would rather her gone or dead like her comrades, but Ichigo has always been stupidly honorable and trusting.

The girl, Riruka, seems to agree with this assessment.

"Oh, my god, you're _insane_ ," she says once she wakes up and gets her bearings.

"Uh..." Ichigo says, getting to his feet. "Wha-"

"Are you stupid or something?" she snaps and Rukia feels her hackles rise at her tone. "You do remember that I _sliced your chest open_ , right? Why didn't you kill me?"

"You thought I was going to _kill you_?" Ichigo exclaims, horrified. "Who do you think-We're not going to kill you!"

The girl's eyes widen and she whips her head around the room. "'We-'" she starts, and then stops, paling when she spots Rukia.

"You!" she hisses and Rukia raises an eyebrow coolly in response.

" _Hi_ ," she says shortly, crossing her arms over her chest. Her left arm twinges slightly, even after Inoue's healing, but she ignore it.

She's gratified to see a look of fear cross Riruka's face.

"Look," Ichigo says impatiently. "What you did back there...you didn't have to do that. So stop freaking out."

The expression on Riruka's face wavers between incredulity and looking like she's about to cry. Rukia scowls and leans further against the wall.

Ichigo looks uncomfortably and frowns. "Er...are you okay?"

"No," Riruka bites out and buries her face in her knees.

Ichigo gives Rukia a helpless look, but she remains stoic. Just because the girl is showing emotional weakness does not mean she should underestimate her; Rukia knows that much.

"Right," Ichigo says, looking between them awkwardly, before shrugging and standing. "I'm going to get Urahara-san. Try not to kill each other."

_"Do I have to?"_ Rukia thinks darkly as he leaves the room, not looking away from the girl for a second.

Presently, Riruka raises her head and gives her a baleful look through red-rimmed eyes.

"Your boyfriend's an idiot," she says accusingly, wiping her eyes.

"Not that it particularly matters," Rukia says coldly, "but he is simply my roommate."

The word "boyfriend" sounds so _stupid_ , and Rukia refuses to lower herself to Riruka's level by repeating it. But roommates is the least of what they are; they're friends, they're comrades, so why did she say roommate?

Riruka looks surprised. "Really?" she says irreverently, fixing her hair with shaking hands. "He's pretty hot. I'd hit that."

Rukia has honestly never thought about Ichigo's looks other than his shockingly bright hair color, and she frowns at the crudeness of her last sentence in particular. She doesn't know exactly what it means, but she can guess, and the fact that Riruka is voicing these opinions in the wake of one of her comrade's death and the others' disappearances does not reflect well on her.

"Are you just going to stare at me all night?" Riruka snaps defensively when Rukia does not reply.

Rukia rolls her eyes and gets to her feet, leaving the room without a word.

"Freak," she hears Riruka mutter on her way out.

Rukia was not exactly pleased when Ichigo'd insisted that they bring Riruka back with them after the fight, but that's nothing compared to how she feels when the girl declares that she will train Ichigo to gain some strange human power like her own, called a "furuburingu." Ichigo doesn't seem particularly interested at first, but the draw of gaining new powers is too much to resist, and he understands all too well Riruka's mind-set that leads her to insist that she owes him and must pay him back.

Rukia does not like it one bit, but there is life in Ichigo's eyes for the first time in years, so she keeps her mouth shut. And anyway, it isn't like any of her objections are really valid. She may think Riruka untrustworthy and petty, but with Ichigo's powers back it's not like he's in any real danger. But as the days go by, Rukia finds herself more and more uncomfortable at the arrangement.

It's not because of Ichigo that she begins to feel threatened. He doesn't even seem to like Riruka much, and if she feels some great attraction to him, she's certainly hiding it well. It's not Ichigo. It's just everyone else.

Because after a couple days, Riruka starts talking with Sado about how his power is actually a Fullbring. She gets in a long argument over the merits of passementerie on fabrics other than linen with Ishida and shares sweets with Inoue. After a while, Inoue starts referring to her as "Riruka-chan." Even the rest of them use her given name in some fashion. Rukia supposes "Dokugamine" is a bit of a mouthful, but...

She's always been Kuchiki-san. She'd never really thought anything of it before, but now it starts to bother her. Is it because Riruka is human and she is not? Or is there something else about her that causes them, even after three years, to regard her so distantly. She feels like it's the Academy all over again, with Renji making new friends and slowly but surely leaving her behind. Rukia has no doubt that even if the Kuchiki had not adopted her, her and Renji's friendship would have dissolved into mere acquaintances anyway.

She sees Ichigo argue loudly with Riruka over her horrible training methods, Inoue smile sweetly enough to shake her out of her bad temper, Sado hang onto her every word about the origins of his Fullbring powers, and Ishida roll his eyes at her fashion sense. Rukia sees all this, but she cannot participate or affect any kind of change. She is forever on the sidelines and the fact that she had to give her gigai back to Urahara after it started having functional problems only makes it worse. She can no longer hide behind its smooth, untarnished face. Rukia finds herself looking in the new bathroom mirror, running her fingers over her scar, stretching it with her cheek muscle; her jagged, grotesque, _ugly_ scar that marks her as used goods more than anything she'd done in the 78th did.

Riruka does not approach her, avoids speaking to her at all costs. Rukia thinks she's afraid of her, but it's a cold comfort as she's beginning to worry that the rest of her friends feel the same.

"What's with you?" Ichigo asks her a week later.

She's sitting on the roof of their apartment building, cleaning her sword off after a particularly messy kill, looking over the bright lights of Karakura, shining in the summer night.

Rukia turns, surprised that he's managed to find her up here. He's still in shihakushou, but these strange sort of... _things_ are starting to form around his neck, wrists and ankles as a result of his Fullbring training.

"Where is your body?" she stalls.

Ichigo scowls. "Kon still has it, the asshole," he grouses, completely unmoved by their roommates' exuberant reaction to finally being free of a plush cotton body for the first time in two and a half years. "I have no idea where he is and I don't want to know."

Rukia smiles weakly and then turns back to the view, closing her eyes as a light wind hits her face.

"You're not answering my question," Ichigo observes, coming to sit next to her on the ledge, leaning his zanpakutou against the wall beside him. "You've been...I dunno, weird lately."

"I do not like her," she says and even before she finishes saying it she feels petty.

"Yeah, she's kind of a bitch, that's nothing new," Ichigo says and Rukia would feel better, but he calls _her_ a bitch at least twenty times a week and couldn't mean it less.

"Are you seriously still mad about that time in the library?" Ichigo says exasperatedly, as if it had happened two years ago instead of two weeks. " _I_ was the one she put in the hospital, you know."

_"YES_ ," Rukia thinks furiously, hands clenching into fists. _"She cut your chest open, drugged you, and was going to_ give you _to them. Why do you have to be so foolishly trusting?"_

But instead she just opens her eyes and shrugs her shoulders noncommittally, trying to focus on the view instead of him.

There's less than half a meter between them. He's so close...it would be so easy to just lean against him, press her face into his shoulder. It would be so, _so_ easy.

"Rukia?" he says, and she turns to see a worried look start to come over his face, visible even in the bad light.

She's known how he's felt about her for a long time. He's never voiced it, probably never will voice it, but she knows all the same. Ichigo lives with her, yells at her for her inability to figure out the dishwasher, scowls when she makes fun of his horrendous cooking, specifically buys ramune just to watch her struggle with opening the bottle, makes sarcastic remarks about her drawings, and, every once and a while, looks at her like she hangs the moon. Like just one word from her could stop the rain and clear away the clouds.

She's known for two and a half years and she's spent every day hoping that eventually it would pass. She'd hoped that nameless thing he felt for her would fade with time, that maybe he'd meet someone at his university, and then he'd look at another woman that way.

But he won't, will he? Not with her living with him, anyway.

Besides, she's known for a while that the two of them, together all the time...it probably isn't healthy. They're a little bit too co-dependent on each other, always were, even from the beginning. Now that the danger has passed, there is no reason for her to stay. Ichigo is not sad anymore. He has his powers back and he's been happier this past week than she's seen him in years. That part of the equation has been taken care of.

"Rukia?" Ichigo says again, turning his head to the side to inspect her more closely. "Hey. What's wrong?"

_"I am in love with you,"_ Rukia thinks, only a little sadly. She gives her zanpakutou one more cursory swipe with the rag and then sheathes her blade, sticking the blood-stained cloth in her obi.

"Ichigo," she says softly, instead, locking eyes with him determinedly. "I need to go away for a while."

Ichigo frowns. "Where?"

Rukia shrugs helplessly. "Just away. I...there are some things...I need to clear my head. I was thinking about asking Urahara-sama for a job...somewhere else. My gigai is fried anyway, so..."

"Clear your head?" Ichigo repeats, looking even more concerned. "What are you talking about?"

"Just for a little while," she lies effortlessly. "I just need a break, you know?"

"A break from what?" Ichigo demands, starting to look almost insulted now.

Rukia rolls her eyes and punches him in the shoulder. "Do not look like that, Ichigo," she orders in a no-nonsense tone. She disembarks from the ledge and walks back across the roof to the door that leads to the stairwell. "Stop worrying. I will be back before you know it."

It is a lie and an act. She's putting on a tough face, but one touch from him and she'll shatter. But Ichigo will never touch her. He'd never touch anyone he wasn't absolutely sure wanted to be touched, because he's a good man. Probably having little sisters has something to do with it as well. He won't know.

He can never know, she's aware. From the start, she's always known that. It's not about her, not really. It's about Ichigo. He needs someone kind, and understanding, and most importantly, _human_. And she's not really any of those things. What she wants for him is...has _always been_ some semblance of normality. He should be with someone who he can settle down and have children with, not a dead woman fifty years his senior.

Not to mention Rukia has always had...issues, for the lack of a better word. Self-esteem issues, to be specific. They'd been a long time coming, but Rukia recognized them in Renji far before she recognized them in herself. Coming from the 78th District of the Rukongai, it was probably inevitable that they feel unworthy and beneath their noble classmates, who were at best bemused and at worst openly scornful of their uncultivated manners. Being adopted by the Kuchiki Clan for no other reason than she resembled its head's deceased wife and forced to bear the jealousy and ill-will of her peers only made things worse. And when she killed Kaien-dono, Rukia truly began to hate herself.

She doesn't anymore, of course. The passage of time and the discovery of Aizen's role in her vice-captain's death did much to assuage her once virulent self-loathing. Finding purpose in working for Urahara and meeting Ichigo and the others have made her happier than she ever was as a shinigami, but Rukia is so old now, so much older than Ichigo, and she knows herself well. She's always leaned towards melancholia and even if she was selfish enough to take what she wants, there is no guarantee that everything wouldn't just fall apart. She knows there is little chance of anything more than friendship between her and Ichigo working out in the long run. It's better this way.

So she'll go away now, and maybe in a couple months it'd be safe to come back. He's got his powers back now, and he doesn't need her to temper his despair and kick him in the head when he was an asshole to any of their friends any longer. It's time to move on.

And it's going to have to be him, because Rukia doesn't think she can.

**Author's Note:**

> Annnnnngst. You really didn't think I was going to end it there, did you? Anyway, I hope you liked this one! Please review!


End file.
